The Dim, Graceful Light
by SmashingPandas
Summary: Audrey Bailer is a normal girl in just about every way: Divorced parents, average grades, and the occasional being picked on by her peers. But what happens when she starts putting two and two together after a strange encounter with a sketchy trench coat guy, and a hair model in plaid? Can she live up to what gifts she's been given? And what does a forgotten kid have to do with it?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_Several Years Earlier…_

There was a slight echo to the flip of a light switch as she walked into the room. It was all her own, the walls covered in red and blue handprints, signatures of visiting friends and family, anything her imagination conjured up within the past week of moving. Audrey went to the dresser on the opposite side of the doorway into her bedroom, and looked in the mirror with a hand buried in her hair.

"It's so humid," she muttered to herself, trying to push down the frizz of her bark brown hair. She looked amongst the chaos that was the surface of her dresser, and plucked a black hair tie from under the clutter of folded clothes. Tying the mess of hair into a ponytail, the shorter cut bangs fell in front of her face.

After pushing them aside, she maneuvered around her bed and reached for the laptop that made it's home next to her bed, on the floor. Before she could even open it, the blaring news broadcast from the first level of the house caught her attention.

"Audrey, come look at this!" Her mother called from the room below. Audrey trotted down the staircase, and stood next to her mother in front of the large television. "It's unbelievable."

"_Hundreds of witnesses have reported in that the largest meteor shower within the last generation is happening at this very moment. Several theories have been presented, but no physical evidence of actual space rocks have been found as of yet; more details will be available soon_," the reported said.

Knowing that shooting stars without any rocks made no sense whatsoever, Audrey knew better than to just take the report for it's word; the media was, usually, never really right. She walked to the closed curtains of the new home, and pulled them apart without her mother paying any attention. Her mouth dropped open. "Mom…" She ran as fast as she could to the front door, not caring about the recently drenched lawn dirtying her bare feet.

Her mother followed shorty after, and the two of them watched the hundreds of flares in the sky. The two stood in awe of the celestial show that was being put on for them, and watched as each spark slowly made it's way closer to the Earth before dying out. They had stood outside for hours, watching the shower instead of unpacking the few things they had left from their previous home. Audrey couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't supposed to be happening. _I would think everyone would've known this big of a meteor shower was gonna come around._ She shrugged it off, and just watched, tapping her tingling fingertips together, trying to stimulate them for the time being.

Little did they know that the very show they watched appear and disappear in the sky was the beginning of the end.

_Present Day…_

The lights were turned down, and the glow of seventeen candles on a cake covered Audrey's face. She sat in the wooden chair, shifting awkwardly as she tried to decide how to look, and what to do with the time of her family singing "Happy Birthday" to her. Eventually, the song ended and she blew out the candles.

"What did you wish for?" A smaller cousin asked, her eyes gleaming with innocence. Audrey smiled at her.

"I can't tell, or else it won't come true," she replied. In all honesty, she didn't make a wish. She never saw the point of asking an unknown, and almost certainly made up, source of power for something that wouldn't really matter in the long run. Audrey stood up, excusing herself to use the bathroom. Conveniently for her, it was located on the whole other side of the house. She locked the door, and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her hair had lightened over the years, and her skin had taken on a slightly darker hue of olive since she had moved to Guymon, Oklahoma. The stale lighting of several make up lights on the top of the mirror, and a smaller overhead light above her made Audrey's eyes look a dusty blue. Her fingers had started to tingle again, so she had started rubbing her fingertips together.

"This is so weird," she muttered. _Ever since I moved in here they've been doing this_, she thought. Shrugging it off, Audrey turned her attention back to the mirror. Turning her face one way, then to the other, she huffed. "I should've put on makeup. Whatever." Audrey sighed, throwing her hands into the air. She popped out a few black heads that seemed obvious to her harsh self, then joined the party again. However, everyone had fallen silent when she opened the door.

She made her way, cautiously, out of the bathroom and across the house. Knowing that her family loved to take advantage of her scaring easily, she had her arms tucked up against her chest, the over sized UCLA sweatshirt comforting her.

"This isn't funny, guys." Audrey said. Her voice slightly echoed throughout the house. Once she reached the dining room, her stomach turned. "Where the hell are they?" She asked herself. Everyone had left. Checking the bay window facing the driveway, she counted the number of cars. "Okaay, so they're all still here. Well, I guess it isn't too hard to hide like, twelve people in this house," she reassured herself. When she turned around, her heart stopped.

"Audrey Bailer," the man said with a gruff voice. Audrey backed up against the window, trying to get as much space between her and this freak as possible.

"Who are you? How the fuck did you get into my house?" Audrey screamed at him. She watched as he took a step closer, her hand wrapped around a ceramic decoration that sat behind her.

"I am not going to hurt you," he said. He pulled a side of his trench coat open slightly, and pulled a small leather wallet, opening it up, and showed an FBI badge and ID. Audrey stood there stunned, not sure on whether to treat this guy like a confused escaped mental patient or a dangerous criminal. "I am apart of the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

"How did you get into my house?" Audrey asked again. "I may only be five and a half feet tall but I'll kick your ass if you don't get out now!" The man took another step forward, but a softer one. By pure instinct, Audrey screamed at the top of her lungs, and hit the man over the head with the ceramic angel. He didn't even flinch. Audrey stood frozen on the spot.

"This isn't going to work." The man said to himself. He grabbed her wrist, and Audrey screamed again. She started to flail her arm, muscles tense and eyes shut tight, trying to get away from the man, but slammed her hand against a cement wall that wasn't there before.

"Fucker!" Audrey yelled, holding her throbbing hand close to her chest. She opened her eyes, and almost fainted right there. She wasn't in her house anymore, but somewhere in the woods. Before she could make sense of her surroundings, she was being led into a bunker of some kind, down a spiral stair case and into some kind of library. There had to be at least seven rows, filled to the brims, of books, old and new. In the aisle between the bookshelves were tables with old fashioned lamps, numerous books opened and notepads with scribbles written on them at each station. She turned around, trying to find a way out, and darted back to the staircase. Before she could even take a step, the man with the trench coat grabbed her arms and held her still, turning her around.

"Audrey, I need you to calm down," the man said. She looked at him, panicked and tears streaming down her face. His face looked stern, vibrant blue eyes staring right back into hers. He looked around, almost for backup. Her head turned to the stairs as his own did, attracted to the sounds of footsteps on metal.

"I thought you said you would be cool about this Cas," the other man said sullenly. He was several inches taller than the first man, which made him almost a foot taller than Audrey. He kind of reminded her of a lumberjack with the plaid shirt and choice of jeans, but with longer hair.

"I tried using the badge, Sam, but she overreacted." The man, addressed as Cas, said.

"_Overreacted? _You broke into my house by, God, I don't even know how, and just grabbed at me!" Audrey yelled. "You're lucky I didn't have a damn fireplace poker in my hand!" Before her anger could get the better of her, and maybe even into a fight, she started sobbing.

"Uh, Cas, sit her down for a minute." Sam said. Cas led Audrey over to a cleared table, sitting her down gently. She brought her feet to the seat of the chair, hugged her knees close to her chest, and sobbed.

"What do you want with me?" She managed to get out between cries. "I-I'm no one import-tant." Cas opened his mouth to say something, but Sam beat him to it.

"Just calm down, and we'll tell you everything, alright?" Sam asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. She glared at him, eyes bloodshot and watery. Quickly after, Audrey started to hold in the tears and dropped her feet to the ground.

"What do you want with me," she demanded, all emotion gone from her face, besides anger. Sam pulled a chair up from the side of the room, and sat in front of her while Cas simply stood where he had been.

"This is going to sound _really_ weird and crazy," Sam started.

"Anything will when you hide a girl's family, kidnap her, and sit her down for a family discussion." Audrey said. Sam looked at Cas, and he shrugged.

Sam had started talking, but Audrey blocked it all out. She really couldn't care less why she was there, but was thinking of ways to break out. Her eyes wandered around the room, and landed on the artifacts that rested on the bookshelves: swords, bits and pieces of cloth, even dead… something-or-others in Plexiglas cases. Audrey jumped a mile out of her skin when she heard metal bangs coming from somewhere in the bunker, then muffled yelling and laughter.

"What the hell was that?" She asked, her hands shaking. The pins-and-needle sensations had moved from her fingertips to throughout her hands at this point, and slowly making their way up her arms. She looked at Sam and Cas for answers.

Cas was simply watching Sam, looking worried out of his mind. Sam, on the other hand, looked totally dysfunctional. It was as if he was ready to have a mental break down right then and there.

"Sam, maybe you should go." Cas said, grimly. Sam simply got up, and left the bunker, slamming the door behind him. Audrey flinched when the door slammed, and looked at Cas.

"What the hell is going on?" Audrey asked, fear creeping into her mind. Cas looked at her, a combination of fear and sadness in his crystal blue eyes.

* * *

><p>Audrey had been sitting in this bunker, for what seemed like hours, with a self-proclaimed, "Angel of the Lord," listening to how these two brothers stopped an apocalypse, several times apparently, and about what had happened to Sam's older brother, Dean. She sat with her hands clenched together, staring at the angel.<p>

"Do you understand the gravity of the situation?" Cas asked, his voice having a shred of hopelessness quiver in it.

"Okay," she started. "Let's assume that the three of you _aren't_ psychopaths with self-identity problems, and that everything you just told me is true: monsters, ghosts, everything, '_Castiel'_. You still didn't explain why you kidnapped me, and make my whole family disappear."

"Audrey, you have something very special growing within you; you have for years." Cas said. Audrey raised an eyebrow in confusion. "The very energy that gives angels their powers is called grace. I have my own, as do all my brothers and sisters. You, for some reason, have small amounts of grace in your soul."

"Okay, yeah, you're nuts!" Audrey said as she threw her hands into the air.

"You think those tingles in your arms and hands are just shakes from being over tired or nervous? Why do you think, whenever you got hurt or sick, your body was healed in a miraculously short amount of time?" Audrey actually listened to Cas intently, thinking about what he said. _I mean, the tingling _is _weird,_ she thought. _And I always got better much quicker than doctors said I would_. She shook her head, dismissing it.

"Obviously I have some sort of disorder that no one cares to discover. Look, if you don't bring me home right now I'll find my own way out and call the cops on your asses," she said. Cas sighed, and nodded.

"I understand your concern, and I'll bring you back. But, if you realize how important your part in this, simply pray-"

"I'm not praying to what doesn't really exist." Audrey said harshly. Cas almost flinched, but relaxed rather quickly. Audrey had never really been the religious, God-worshiping sort. She was always a hard evidence kind of thinker. Without any evidence of a god, or angels for that matter, she didn't believe in them.

Cas put a hand on her shoulder, and in a blink of an eye, Audrey was back in her bathroom. She was a bit dizzy, but she could hear the muffled chatting of her family outside the bathroom door. Audrey darted to the kitchen, and looked at the clock: a half hour had passed. Her mother walked up to her, and put a hand on her forehead.

"Mom?" Audrey asked, her voice quivering.

"Sweetheart, you're on fire!" Her mother exclaimed. "Were you getting sick in the bathroom? You're as pale as a ghost, and really sweaty, hon. Go lay down for an hour or two, it'll help you feel better."

"Um, okay Mom." Audrey said, walking to the staircase.

_What on Earth happened?_ Audrey thought to herself. Once she got to her bedroom, Audrey looked out her bay window and into the mosaic that was the setting sun. She thought about what had just happened to her. _Maybe I passed out, maybe I'm just really sick_. She thought. Audrey didn't bother getting into her pajamas, and under her covers. She quickly fell asleep, trying to forget what she had just gone through.

* * *

><p>Three days later, Audrey was back in school. Her small, close knit group of friends had taken her to dinner the night after her party and celebrated at a friend's house afterwards. She didn't tell <em>anyone<em> about the little episode she had, which was burned into her mind as some kind of hallucination due to a fever.

However, ever since she had "met" the angel named Castiel, the tingling in her hands and arms had gotten worse, and more prominent. They started to feel like warmth in her palms reaching all the way up her arms and down her shoulders and back. She simply ignored it, thinking it would go away eventually like it always did.

After the second bell of the day had rung, it was the end of her first period class. Audrey made her own way to her locker, exchanging one textbook for another, a notebook for a binder. Before she could get the rest of her supplies needed, her locker slammed shut from behind. She sighed, and turned around to face the boy that plagued her existence. The masses of students in the hall started to quiet down after realizing what was happening.

"What the hell, Angela?" Audrey asked, holding the books she already grabbed to her side with an arm. "Don't you have a class to get to?"

"We have like, five minutes. Besides, I needed a pick me up, and making your life harder does just the job!" Angela giggled, sneering at Audrey in the process. As her anger boiled, Angela felt the tingles and warmth in her hands get worse; it started to actually sting her skin from the inside out.

"Ya know, all you are is an empty shell of a girl with a terrible self-worth, and I pity you that you feel the need to make others feel small just to make yourself feel better." Audrey said. A few gasps and small looks of disbelief spotted the crowd. Angela's smirk melted off her face.

"At least I'm not a bastard child, right hon?" Audrey threw her books to the ground, the stinging heat getting hotter. The plastic on her binder was slightly misshaped in the form of her curved fingers. Audrey pushed Angela into the wall of lockers.

"I'm _not_ a bastard!" Audrey yelled, her face two inches from Angela's own. "My dad lives in fucking Oregon; it's not my fault they spilt up, you bitch!" Angela smiled maliciously at Audrey.

"How do you know that?" That was the last straw for Audrey. She quickly lifted a fist, and aimed for Angela's face. For some reason, her fist opened when she got closer to Angela's head. Angela was able to get out of the hold at the last second, and Audrey ended up slapping her open hand on the lockers in front of her.

A bright whitish-blue light engulfed her hand, and almost blinded the students surrounding the fight. When it had diminished, a scotch mark outlining her hand was left on the lockers. Parts of the metal where her hand was placed had melted to where it was malleable.

When Audrey had realized what she did, she turned to the groups of kids behind her. All at once, they screamed and ran to the nearest classroom for cover. She looked at her hands, the tingling still there. Her mind immediately went back to, what she thought was a dream, the conversation she had with the "angel". Audrey started to breathe quickly, trying to look for a way out of the school. She heard numerous 911 calls being made from inside classrooms.

"I don't have time to run." She muttered to herself. _Alright, Castiel, you win. _Audrey prayed in her head.

Without a second thought, a faint sound of fluttering feathers was heard from behind her. She turned, and saw the man in the trench coat again. Without a single word, Cas grabbed her arm, and in a second, they were back in the bunker.

"You brought her back?" Sam said, walking in from a hallway leading out of the library.

"No questions about what just happened," Audrey said grimly. "Just tell me what the hell I am, and what I need to do to be normal again."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Okay, so I know this is kinda late to be starting a story having to do with Demon!Dean, with the season premier in like, two or so weeks. Whatever. I'll either try to conform to what goes on in the actual show, or I'll do my own thing (most likely the ladder). Hopefully I can get a chapter out every two weeks or so, considering the amount of school work I have in incredibly higher than what I've had the past three years of high school. Review for me, guys! You're what decides on if this continues or not! Don't be shy, I love the feedback :) <strong>

**Remember, Read, Review, and Enjoy!**

**~ Nicole**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Audrey slumped into a chair at the table furthest from the boys, resting her head in her arms on the table. Sam walked over to her side, while Cas stayed where he stood. Sam turned to Cas, raising an eyebrow.

"I told you she would call." Cas said. Audrey's head shot up, and glared at the boys.

"You bet on whether I would pray for you or not?" She yelled. "I didn't call you because I felt like I belonged here, I gave in because I realized first hand that I'm a God damned freak!"

"You are not a freak, Audrey." Cas said.

"Then what am I?" She asked, her voice slightly cracking. Audrey's eyes started to fill with tears, and her bottom lip started to shake. She buried her head back in her arms trying to muffle the small whimpers escaping her lips.

Sam put a hand on Cas's shoulder, and nodded his head towards the next room over. "Let's give her some time." He whispered as he started to walk into the hall. Cas nodded, then walked into the hallway. Once the two of them were a ways down the hall, Sam asked, "What happened?"

"She almost used the grace in her to kill another student." Cas said.

"Excuse me?" Sam said. "Did she smite someone?"

"Almost," Cas answered. "The girl who was messing with her moved out of the way, so she ended up melting the front of her locker."

"Is she a Nephilim?" Sam asked. Cas shook his head no. "Then how can she have that amount of angel-juice in her?"

"I don't know," Cas said. "But what I do know is that Audrey doesn't want any of it."

"So?" Cas looked at Sam, stopping in the middle of the hall. "Wait, do not tell me you're thinking what I think you're thinking."

"I'm losing my own grace, Sam. I can feel it dying out more, and more every day. Just teleporting to bring Audrey here was burning it away." Cas said, his voice deeper and darker than before. "The grace in her is familiar to me. Maybe, if she can develop and work on controlling it, I could-"

"Don't you think she would want to keep the grace after working with it?" Sam asked, crossing his arms. "You're talking about giving a kid a puppy, having the kid raise it, then putting it up for adoption while he's at school."

"I don't have any other options to get my grace back. If I don't do anything, I'll lose everything that I am, and any hope of trying to fix Dean's soul ourselves." The tension in the air could've been cut with a knife. Sam was shifting from side to side when Cas brought Dean into the conversation. Rocks dropped in both of their stomachs when the realized this could've been the only choice they had: building some girl up, only to crush everything she gained afterwards.

"This can't be our only decision, Cas."

"What else do we have to do?" Cas asked sternly. "Give me something, Sam; because I don't see any other course of action here."

"Listen, Cas. We don't know if Audrey will even consider working with her powers, never mind you putting a giant syringe in her throat." Sam said, pointing towards the library. "Let's just go talk to her for a bit, and figure out what we're gonna do from there. I mean, there's no way she's gonna be able to go home after that, and-" Sam was cut off from a muffled yelp, coming from the library. He and Cas ran back to Audrey, to find her staring at her phone with a hand covering her mouth, watching a video. "Audrey?" The two walked over, and watched over her shoulder.

"I'm not a bastard!" They heard Audrey say from the phone. They realized that one of the students watching the fight was recording.

"How do you know that?" A second girl said, who Sam and Cas assumed to be the kid who almost had her soul burnt away. They watched at Audrey put a fist up, and unknowingly used her grace on the locker as Angela ducked. A huge scream from the surrounding spectators echoed throughout the room, and the video started getting very shaky. At that point, the kids were running in all different directions. Some of the last few seconds of the video showed Audrey staring at the scorch mark of her hand on the locker, and the metal starting to melt.

"Wow." Sam said quietly. Audrey threw her phone onto the table, and looked up at the boys.

"What am I?" Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hands were shaking. Sam started to sympathize with her. His mind flashed back to when he was addict to demon blood, when he lost his soul, and when he had some grace, left by Gadreel. He started to feel the confusion, the torment, of not knowing what happened to him and what he could do. The two boys stood silent, and Audrey's fear ridden face changed quickly back to anger. "Well? You, supposedly the two most important people in the world, don't even know what the hell I am? You say that you've fought ghosts, monsters, damn archangels and you don't know what you're looking at?" Audrey stood up, and slammed the chair under the table. "Why the hell did I believe you two?"

Audrey looked to her right, and went down the first hall she set her eyes on. She walked across the library, holding her breath until she took two turns and was lost in the maze of a bunker.

That's when she lost it. Tears started to flood down her face as she walked from hall to hall, each turn getting darker and less comforting. The further she got away from the boys, the louder she let her sobbing get. It finally got to where she was bawling, her cries echoing throughout the empty halls. Mascara smeared on the backs of her hands when she rubbed her eyes, and the steps she took got smaller until she stopped walking altogether. Audrey leaned against the wall, and slid to the floor. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and cried. The cold sting of the concrete wall against her face sent chills down her spine. Time seemed to have stopped for Audrey. She just sat there, crying.

She jumped out of her skin when she heard giant slams of something against a metal wall, close to where she was sitting and self loathing. She sniffled up the last of her tears, and followed the sounds of the bangs. After about two minutes of wandering, she came to face an iron door with a small window. Audrey leaned to see what was inside. Her heart stopped when a pair of pitch black eyes met her own bright pacific blues. She swallowed hard, standing completely still when the man tied in ropes and chains smiled at her through the window. Audrey backed up and sat against the wall next to the door.

"A demon is in the basement," she muttered to herself. "It's real. It's all real." Audrey looked at her hands, and went over every second of what happened during the fight at school. She started thinking about how the tingling in her arms and hands got worse whenever her emotions got the better of her, or when she was around Cas. After years of thinking it was some undiagnosed disorder, Audrey came to terms that it was an angel's grace in her.

She took a deep breath in, and tried to control the little sanity she had left. Audrey looked at her hands, and tried to focus on the tingling. It started to become more of a pins-and-needles kind of tingling, instead of a warm kind; almost like the grace in her could sense the hellish soul in the next room over, wanting to destroy it. She tried to relax her nerves. The last thing she needed was to lose control again, and mess with the demon in chains.

"Well," Audrey said to herself. She looked all around her and said, "I'm lost." She stood up, and started walking towards the way she came from. Eventually, she found her way into a kitchen like area, which led to the library after a turn or two of halls. There, she saw Cas and Sam rifling through tens of books, old and new alike. "What're you looking for?" Audrey said quietly.

"Anything," Sam said. "Anything that will help the three of us figure out what to do next."

"… Do you need any help?" She asked, sitting across from the two boys. Sam and Cas looked at each other, confused. "What?"

"It's just that no more than an hour ago, you were hell bent on trying to deny what we had just told you." Audrey shrugged.

"I came to terms, I guess. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, not Champagne." She said.

"Do you want to work with your grace now, Audrey?" Cas asked, looking up from his book.

"If I can control it," Audrey started. She looked at her folded hands on the table, and thought about everything that she had seen in the last 24 hours. "… Maybe I can use it for good or something. Maybe, after a while, I could go back and help people. Who knows."

Sam and Cas exchanged grim looks. The two of them knew Audrey would never be able to have a "normal" life again; never mind going back to her family. The police were probably starting a missing person's report, or some kind of classified investigation in what she did to that locker. The best chance Audrey had at this point was helping through being a hunter, or angel, or some kind of mix of the two if she even ended up keeping her grace. The two of them haven't even really thought about what they're going to do with her after the whole grace exchange experiment. But if it meant having a chance for Cas to be the same angel he was a few years ago, and that giving a possibility of changing Dean back into a human, then it was good enough for now.

"I assume the only good way of getting control of whatever grace you have is finding out where it came from, and practicing what you can do with it." Cas said. "It's very odd… A Nephilim has, more or less, enhanced human abilities because of the human half, and the intensifying aspect of angels. But you have actual grace in your soul. It's obviously possible that you have some of the same powers as angels."

"So I'm like an adopted angel?" Audrey said. She nodded, and lured her lips. "Right, that doesn't sound crazy or anything. How do we even start with this? I mean, it's not like there are classes I can take, or be in an internship for angel training."

"Well, we could find a case." Sam said. Cas nodded his head, and Sam grabbed his laptop.

"A what?" Audrey asked.

"A case. All those legends you hear about ghosts, monsters, all of it is real. Except Big Foot; that's all fake." He started. "Hunters are the people that take care of all that evil stuff to keep everyone else safe; it's what Dean and I started out as."

"So I'm gonna hunt dead people?" Audrey asked, confused and doubtful.

"Basically," he replied. Audrey sat next to Sam, watching him surf through Google and Bing for whatever made a case for him.

"What are you looking for exactly?"

"Might as well start you off with something we deal with 24/7 now," he said. "Freak electrical storms, energy spikes and power outages-"

"So a lazy electrician." Audrey said flatly. Sam chuckled. The corners of his lips perked up just a bit, but it was more than enough for him. He hadn't had a real shred of happiness for months.

"More like demons, Audrey."

"What?" Audrey yelled. "I'm not religious, but aren't demons, some of the worst things you could deal with like, ever?!"

"Eh, we deal with them a lot around here." Sam said with a twinge of regret. It seemed like everything around him eventually led back to his brother, and his tarnished soul. Every once in a while, he would ask himself why he just didn't stay at Stanford; none of this would've happened. Dean would be on cases by himself hunting monsters again instead of dealing with angels, Jess would be alive, and he would have the "white picket fence" life like he wanted. But then, it occurs to him that he's a different person from then, and that's what pulls him back into the reality of his life. "Here." Sam said, pointing at the screen. "It may not be a demon, but it screams supernatural."

Audrey read the articles about one town a day and a half away having weird power outages, lightning storms, and a surge of crime; weird crime. Most of it had to do with revolving around juvenile pranks, like those of a high schooler, but with a deadly twist: a principle being egged to death while driving, a minister, and his home, being crushed with incredible amounts of toilet paper tee-pees, and countless numbers of cattle appearing out of thin air, and being tipped onto passing bystanders.

"This sounds like some senior prank gone wrong." She said.

"It could be another trickster," Cas said.

"Could it be Gabriel?" Sam asked, hope in his voice. "Maybe he just faked his death."

"Who?" audrey asked.

"My brother, the archangel Gabriel." Cas said, sullen.

"We should probably get going." Sam interrupted. "We're gonna need an I.D. for Audrey."

"I'm fairly certain fake I.D.'s are illegal." Audrey said, uncertain of what she's gotten herself into.

"About 98 percent of what we do is illegal, kid." Sam said.

"So much for getting into college," Audrey muttered.

* * *

><p>Sam drove the Impala for the whole trip, seemingly without stopping. Once they got to the town of Alliance, Nebraska, Sam gave Audrey the run down on how they run cases. Sam and Cas were posing as FBI agents, and Audrey had a fake FBI Photographer pass, since she could pass as an intern in her early twenties with the right outfit and makeup. The three of them went to see each of the bodies, and the crime scenes that weren't already cleaned up. They eventually got the details about all these "classic" pranks turning fatal out of nowhere. In all honesty, they had no suspects. They ruled out any of the students at the principle's school because he was extremely well liked among the peers. It couldn't have been anyone the minister knew because he didn't know anyone recent: the man was in his late 90's and was retired for the past 10 or so years. The whole cow tipping extravaganza was just off because none of the victims had anything in common; it's like they were just picked randomly.<p>

"We're either dealing with some kind of genius and we're missing hints, or a trickster who's bored out of his mind." Sam said as the three of them sat at a table in a local diner.

"I don't even get why someone would do all this." Audrey said. "Like, these are just regular people with everyday, stale lives. There's no point because none of them had anything valuable to their death; they're all just average Joes."

"I'm not picking up on anything around here." Cas said. "And it's not just my grace. This town feels entirely normal."

They sat at this table for about two hours going over notes of the deaths, and guzzling down coffee and hot chocolate. Those two hours of work amounted to absolutely nothing. They didn't find any potential in figuring out what was doing all this. Eventually, when the sun started to set, they left the diner and started for he motel they were staying in.

As they were walking, Audrey noticed someone on the opposite side of the road in the main stretch of town. They were walking the same speed as her, Sam, and Cas. She couldn't see their face, but they walked along side them for at least five blocks. They wore red sleeveless hoodie with a black hood, and black skinny jeans, and Audrey guessed they were probably four or five inches taller than her.

When the three of them stopped at a crosswalk for the oncoming traffic, everything around them stopped. Audrey turned right to Sam and Cas, who were already looking around for anything to give them a clue to what was happening. Speeding cars were paused, leaves moving in the wind stopped in mid-wave, and passers by were frozen in mid-stride.

"Guys?" Audrey asked, looking around. "What's going on?"

"Hell, if I knew." Sam said. His hand went to his hip to grab his gun, but when he brought it up it had turned into a banana. "What the hell?"

"Look." Cas said, motioning to the hooded person. Their shoulders were moving like they were laughing. The hood came down, and revealed his face. He had to be about 16 or 17. His brown hair was put up in a messy fohawk kinda thing, and he shoved his hands into the shallow pockets of his slightly sagging pants. He walked across the road casually, a smirk on his face.

"God, I thought I'd never see a Winchester again." The boy said, looking at Sam. He turned to Cas, and his smile fade into a grimacing sneer. "And the Angel of Thursday; the one who enjoys killing little kids."

"Alright, trickster," Sam said. "Just because you look like a kid doesn't mean I won't stab you right int he heart." The kid laughed and threw his head back, balancing on the balls of his feet.

"That's gold!" He said. "You actually think I'm a trickster? Wow, how stupid can you get in five years, Sam?"

"Why can't I sense what you are?" Cas demanded. The kid shrugged, then laughed again. "I'm not playing games." Cas yelled. He went to go grab the kid's collar and pull him up close and personal for a huge, meaning angel monologue, but Cas's image disappeared in his first step. Audrey and Sam were wide eyed. The kid bent down, and grabbed a little figurine of Cas off the sidewalk, twirling it around in his fingers.

"Remember me now, Sam?" The kid asked. Sam's face turned into one of disbelief. He scoffed at him, and threw the figure into his pocket. "Not letting this out of my sight, again."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Wow, look at that. I actually got this done one time. So yeah, I'll try to make this length the average length of each chapter, and I kinda gave you guys a cliffhanger, but it may be obvious to some (I love little details and hints). Oh well! That's the fun part. <strong>

**Remember: Read, Review, and Enjoy!**

**~ Nicole**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Sam?" Audrey exclaimed. She turned to face him, her hands in the air. "What the hell just happened to Cas?!" The kid laughed, throwing his head back.

"So I guess you got a newbie hunter on your hands, huh Sammy?" He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but shut it with a confused look plastered on. "Hey, where's your brother?" He watched Sam's face change once again as his melted into a smirk. "Oh wait, I know."

"How do you know?" Audrey asked. "Tricksters can't-"

"Dear God, how many times do I have to say it, girlie?" The kid said angrily. "I'm _not_ a trickster! I'm-"

"An antichrist." Sam said flatly. Audrey's jaw dropped. She looked from Sam, to the kid, then back again.

"What?" Audrey yelled. "A spawn of the devil is standing right in front of me right now?"

"That's a misconception, hon." The kid said, holding a finger up. "Good ol' Luci was already in the cage when I was made up. I'm just half human, half demon. But wouldn't it be something to be Satan's son?"

"Alright, kid," she started. "First of all, do not call me, 'hon', 'kay? Second of all, I'm not _just_ a new kid on the block."

"Just because Lucifer's in the cage doesn't mean my powers are any less dangerous, kid." He said sternly. "You better watch it before I break this little Cas-tion figure in half, _then_ turn him back."

"What happened to you, Jesse?" Sam interrupted. "You used to be an innocent little kid who wanted to be like the X-men."

"Uh, no." Jessie said. "_You guys_ wanted me to be like an X-man. _You_ wanted to 'train' me so you could use me for your own gain in the fight you didn't want to fight alone. _I _decided to live my life like I wanted to. Once I noticed how strong I was, I worked my ass off to get where I am today. Sure, Luci being in the cage dampened on my powers, but I've made up for it."

As soon as he finished, Jessie was gone. Sam and Audrey looked all around them for any sign of _anything_ unusual. Jessie could alter reality around them. He stopped time around them, for God sakes. He could do anything really at this point, and they had no idea what to expect. Out of the corner of her eye, Audrey saw Sam fly to the ground on his stomach, like he was kicked down. Jessie materialized behind him, chuckling.

"God, that felt good." He looked down at Audrey, standing about six inches from her. He looked back at Sam, and smirked. "Been wanting to do this for the past few years."

"What're you planning to do, Jessie?" Audrey asked sternly. He face Audrey again.

"Well, considering Sam's brother is the newest Knight of Hell, I expect he's gonna want a little visit."

"You're a bit too late." She started, crossing her arms. "Dean's a little preoccupied right now with some ropes in chains in a dungeon."

"Kinky." Jessie said. His eyes flickered black, and he disappeared. Suddenly, everything started moving as if it was never paused.

"W-Where did he go, Sam?" Audrey started to panic. "He has Cas!"

"We gotta get back to the bunker. Now." Sam said, getting up. The two of them sprinted back to the motel to grab the car, and get back to the bunker as fast as they could.

* * *

><p>Audrey and Sam raced into the lowest levels of the bunker, looking for any sort of disturbance. Knowing that Jessie can alter reality as they knew it, he could be anything. If his powers were more controlled since he was a child, he had no real limits. Add in the fact that he probably had even more of a spectrum of powers, neither of them had any idea of what they were up against.<p>

Once they reached the iron doors that held Dean, they used every bit of energy to swing the heavy door open. Sam's stomach dropped when he saw what had become of the holding room.

"Your brother's a douche." Jessie said, trying to get out of the ropes and chains that previously held Dean.

"Where is he?" Sam demanded. He walked up to Jessie, and kicked the chair back. Both the chair and Jessie slammed onto the cornet floor, scuffing the devil's trap a bit. "Tell me!"

"Ya think I know?" Jessie retaliated. "I got the little shit out of this thing, and he goes and knocks me out and ties me up! Called me an abomination for being half-and-half, then just busted outta here. This simple devil's trap can't hold a knight for too long, bud. You should know that by now."

Sam's demeanor took a turn downwards as he stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut. Audrey jumped half a mile out of her skin when the metal door shut, leaving her and Jessie alone in the room. She took a small step backward, feeling the wall against her back for support. She swallowed the lump in her throat, walked over to Jessie, and propped the chair back up.

"Thanks, babe." Jessie said as he smirked and winked at her. Audrey put on the best poker face she could, but he saw right through it. "Please, a toddler could tell that face is just an act. You're scared outta your mind."

"Where's Cas?" She asked quietly. She was shy, and he could practically smell it. Jessie didn't take her seriously and just chuckled.

"Aren't you adorable?" Audrey grabbed his collar, and pulled him close to her face. What got Audrey going is that second wind of a temper she had.

"I'm not asking you a second time." She demanded through clenched teeth. The tingling began in her hands and arms again, getting warmer by the second; and Jessie could feel it by the pit in his stomach growing.

"What is _that_?" He asked, the smirk turning into a grimace. He looked disgusted. "It's almost scary." He thought for a moment, and his cocky attitude drained. "Is that-"

"Yeah," she interrupted. "Grace. Told you I wasn't just a kid. Now answer the damn question."

"Right pocket." Jessie muttered with a sneer. "But I'm a bit tied up so-" Audrey dropped his collar, the chair falling to the ground. It tilted back and forth on it's legs before settling again on all four. She dug her hand into his pocket, looking for the figure that was Castiel. Jessie chuckled, nodding his head back a bit. "I like rough girls, ya know."

"Piss off." Audrey muttered. Jessie came back with an angry meow and a hiss, which just made Audrey even more irritated. "You're so fucking immature."

"What can I say? I'm a sixteen year old boy; hormones are _raging_ now aren't they?" Jessie laughed again when Audrey tried to keep eye contact to zero. She managed to grab the Cas figure, and pull it out of Jessie's pocket.

"Change him back." Audrey said as she put him on the ground.

"Uh, hello? _Devil's trap_? _Ropes and chains_? I can't move, never mind work some demon charm." Jessie said.

"Bull shit," Audrey said. "If I can get through these sigils on the wall, you can get out of a devil's trap."

"I wish it were that easy, babe." Jessie admitted. "I _do_ have limitations on this stuff. Sure, it would probably hurt like Hell trying to walk out of this thing, but I be I could do it if I wasn't _tied up_." He finished, putting extra emphasis on the last few words. Audrey's hand went to start uniting him, but stopped before she could move the first knot.

"How do I know you won't disappear?" Audrey said, crossing her arms. Jessie shrugged.

"You don't." He started. "But now I wanna find that asshat as much as you and Sam do now. I need to give him a piece of my mind… and preferably a piece of my fist in his face. I don't care if he's a Knight of Hell or what, it's been personal for a while now."

Audrey looked this kid in they eyes, and even deeper than that. To her brain, she just saw a pair of dark greenish eyes, but she felt, somewhere inside her, that he was being genuine; that he was telling the truth. She walked behind the chair he sat in and untied the ropes. She left the handcuffs with pentagrams engraved on the sides around his wrists, however. Jessie stood up, towering over Audrey by almost half a foot. He bent back, cracking his spine about three times.

"That's refreshing." He said. "Now, if you could let my hands reach the front of my body I'll be happy."

"You're not supposed to be happy. You're half demon, and-"

"Half angel ain't no better, sweetheart." Jessie said, locking his eyes with hers. "At least when you're half demon, you're expected to be evil and an abomination to existence. You could do whatever the hell you want. Half angels are meant to be hunted down for breathing."

"I'm not half an angel. I'm fully human." Audrey said. "We don't know what I am yet…" She shook her head, and turned around. "Enough, just turn Cas back to normal. Now."

"I can make the earth beneath you tremor with a fist, eject a demon from a body with a simple look, and could probably destroy any angel I wanted with a single word, and I've been reduced to making little plastic soldiers come to life."

"_Back_ to life, douche." Audrey said. "It's your fault you're here, anyway; killing all those people for no reason."

"Psshh, I have reasons. Damn good ones, too." Jessie said, looking away from Audrey.

"Like what? They were normal people, living a normal life! They had nothing against you. Hell, they had no idea you even existed!" Jessie turned to Audrey again, his face stern.

"You wanna know _why_ I killed the people I did?" He asked, taking a few steps towards Audrey. "You wanna know _why_ they deserved it? That student loved principle was using kids he blackmailed for his own personal, sick pleasures behind the scenes. That perfect preacher was stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the church; granted I'm the last person to help a church, but you just don't steal money from people like that."

"And the cows?" Audrey asked. Jessie chuckled.

"Well, _that_ was for my own entertainment."

"See? You're no better than any other demon." Jessie rolled his eyes.

"Please, give me a break." He started. "If you compared me to even a crossroads demon, I'd look like Little Orphan Annie."

"What, you sing and dance?" Audrey crossed her arms, glaring at Jessie.

"I wouldn't do half the stuff those douches do. Sure, I've killed people; but so have your precious Winchester boys and little Cassie there. Hell, they were gonna kill _me_ at first; I wasn't even thirteen. That's when you gotta think about who the real bad guys are."

"Trust me, I know who the bad guys are." Jessie raised an eyebrow.

"Do you? Do you _really_?" He took another step closer. "If Sam Winchester is supposedly one half of the best team of hunters to exist, the thing that momma monsters check under the beds of their babies for," he paused and turned to face the fallen chair. "… Then why doesn't he even know what he's dealing with? Why did he pluck you from your family? Which I assume you had, a damn normal and nice one too, probably."

Audrey started to think then. Jessie _did _have a point: if the Winchesters are so important and famous and have fought and killed everything they've come up against, why couldn't they give Audrey a clear explanation? Why, exactly, did they come into her life in the first place? She didn't ask for them to uproot her from her normal life. She had half of a full scholarship built up for UCLA, and had a plan for the next ten years of her life. What if they want her to kill things that don't need to be? Or _shouldn't_ be killed?

Audrey pushed all these thoughts aside for the moment, and refocused onto Cas. She placed the figurine on the outside of the door, and pushed Jessie out of the devils trap. He screamed bloody murder as he fell out of it, ever fiber of his being burning as it passed the edge of the trap. He landed on his stomach, and rolled onto his side.

"God dammit, that fuckin' hurt." Jessie moaned.

"Change him back." Audrey repeated. She turned away from him, and put one foot outside the door. "Now." Jessie glared at her, his eyes squinted.

Suddenly, a large thump came from outside the door. Cas, now normal sized and a full bodied being, laid on the floor form his previous tried advance at Jessie. Audrey slammed the door shut behind her as she left, and took one last quick glance in the room. Jessie sat on the ground, looking at the chair in the middle of the trap. She shook her head, and helped Cas get up and off the ground.

"You alright, Cas?" Audrey asked.

"I'm fine." Cas said sternly. "Where is he?" Audrey motioned her head to the chamber.

"Good news, he's stuck in there. Bad news…" Audrey looked down at the floor. The last thing she wanted to tell Cas was that Dean was gone _again_.

"I already know." Cas said. "I can feel the absence." Without another word, Cas walked down the hall and into the maze that was the bunker, leaving Audrey alone outside of the containment room.

"I'm sorry," she muttered.

Audrey leaned back on the wall adjacent to the door, and slid down to the floor. She brought her knees up to her chin, and sat there for what seemed like hours. The air in the bunker was thick with depression, false hope, and overall tension. It could be cut with a knife and served for dinner. She didn't want to go catch up to Cas and tell him everything Jessie said, never mind find Sam. He was probably punching holes on walls or something to get the anger out of starting over the hunt for his brother. Audrey didn't need to get in the middle of that.

"I'm just gonna sleep," she muttered, rolling onto her knees, then standing up. "It's the only thing I can seem to do right right 'bout now."

Audrey made her way to what was her "bedroom" at the time. It was a copy of Sam and Dean's room, just empty. The walls lacked any sort of personality, they were just a weird, ugly base color. The single bed was in the middle of the room with a night stand on either side, with a lamp on each. She slumped on the bed, gathered up the pillow in her arms, and rested the side of her face on the pillow. Her eyes focused on the stitches of the lampshade, tracing each curve and stray fiber. Audrey shook her head, clicked the lamps off, and kicked her shoes off to the foot of the bed. Her eyes drooped, and closed. Within minutes, her mind was off in some imaginary, uncontrollable world; one that actually made sense to her mind, even if it didn't to her body.

* * *

><p><em>Audrey's mind was all over the place, but stationary at the same time. Her dreams weren't quick flashes of little movies like they should've been. They were flashed of pictures, of things that she would've seen through her own eyes. But, none of them she recognized.<em>

_Quick bursts of a picture of looking between jail cell bars kept going in and out of her head. The walls were a pale, off white kind of rocky material. She was elevated, like she was sitting on a bench or chair. Blurs of moving beings were on the other side of the bars; the free side. Audrey could almost feel the tension of sitting in the cell for, what felt like forever. None of his was familiar to her, but yet if felt like some kind of home; like she had belonged there since the beginning._

* * *

><p>Audrey's eyes fluttered open as they adjusted to the retuning darkness of her room. She looked at the smooth ceiling above her, realizing she moved when she slept. The pillow was thrown on the floor, and the sheets were strewn around her body. She sat up, and clicked a lamp on. As she rubbed her eyes, she turned to the other night stand and looked at the digital alarm clock. Four hours had passed.<p>

"Maybe they've cooled down by now." Audrey muttered. She yawned, stretched, and stood up. She took arm-fulls of blankets, sheets, and the pillow and lofted them back onto her bed in a huge bundle for later.

Not bothering to put her shoes on, she walked out into the halls to find the boys. When she reached the library, she saw a handwritten note on the table closest to her. It read: _Food's stocked in the kitchen, there's a .45 under your bed with a flask of holy water. Cas and I will be gone for a few days. We'll give you a call soon. -Sam_

"Are you kidding me?" Audrey huffed, slumped in the chair, and ran her fingers through her hair. "Leave me, of all people, alone with an antichrist. Great idea, Sam."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Okay, so this one is kinda smaller than the first few, and I'm a bit late I think. Oh well, school's been a bitch and S10 just started! I'm sure we're all a bit preoccupied right now LOL Remember: Read, Review, and Enjoy!<strong>

**~ Nicole**


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